


Bardbarian

by NXTDNDIMHO



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 06:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23346628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NXTDNDIMHO/pseuds/NXTDNDIMHO
Summary: I got tagged in a post about an electric guitar that was also an axe and did my thing. Here's all that work.





	Bardbarian

Got tagged in a share of this post. There was no further instructions, but I am who I am.

Right, so first off, I... uh... well, I did this one twice, sort of, and neither one was a Barbarian because not all Axe-folk are Barbarians. I've heard of guitars, electric guitars in particular, referred to as "axes" a bunch in cartoons featuring rockstar caricatures when I was a kid, so the idea stuck. Do bare in mind, these first two are really old characters and the PDF I used to make their characters has since broken. Everything might not have made it through the last... like three OS updates.  
  
The first one is a riff on the Elite Tauren Chieftain, which is a rock band made up of Blizzard employees that they made into a WoW character that I first encountered in Heroes of the Storm. I made him into a church musician because that's what I've done the most of, and I like the idea of a rockstar on a mission, and that mission being traveling from town to town, fixing a few problems and preaching the Good Word, and then breezing on to the next one.  
  
I didn't give him a particular deity, so it can literally be whatever. To me, one of the things that draws me towards playing religious characters in D&D is that I can use them to express the parts of being of faith that I like while turning the more odious parts into literal villains that you can stab. Good stuff: Motivation to help people in need without compensation, an excuse to get people together for art that has a social value that isn't tied directly to it's perceived quality, positive outlet for whatever you happen to be feeling. Bad stuff: oppressive authority based in perceived rather than actual morality or piety, same being used as an excuse for expressing hatred, both of those together because jesus fuck, this is exactly not the thing we're supposed to be fucking doing.

The second one here is a riff on the myth of Robert Johnson, who was a legendary blues guitarist. Since we live in a society where some unlanded, middle-class bloke could never have been the most prolific playwright of the Early-Modern period and most widely read author in the English Language and black people absolutely can't be solely responsible for revolutionizing or pioneering genres of music, the story goes that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for being able to play guitar real good.  
  
Orcs are, traditionally, rooted in extremely unfriendly depictions of indigenous peoples, usually Africans. Their innate savagery is part of Fantasy's Colonial Heritage and something I've been trying to lean away from without edging into Native American "Nobel Savage" tropes (though that has been a problem I've had making Centaur characters; even though I'm pretty sure that creature originated in Greece and the Mongols were a much larger society of horseback archers, my Amerio-Centric ass keeps wanting to make them Native Americans). All of this is to say that if I were to go back and remake this character as a villain, I would steer into the inversion of the name and make him a Human who is attempting to steal culture from marginalized groups, and thus has made a pact with a Devil. I haven't quite placed which of the Lords of the Nine Hells would be most interested in sewing toxic cultural appropriation, but I will get back to you.  
  
Working with the stuff I've currently got laid out, maybe the story to go with is that John here struck his pact with a demon because meritocracy is a lie; even though he was good (It's also worth noting that the pact doesn't make him any better at playing guitar, just makes his stuff nicer and allows him to summon his guitar out of nowhere), he wasn't making any money or getting any fame. Think of the pact as a Recording Contract.  
  
Comparing this character as both an antagonist and protagonist, I think both ideas have legs. It would actually be fun to use the, "I'm just trying to make my way in the world," half-orc version as an NPC that the players could persuade to help them fight this demon corporatocracy.

This last one is some original work from this morning and is the character I stared building when I first saw the post. Since it's the one following the prompt, I'm going to go a bit more in depth on the choices I made building him.  
  
Race: Half-Orc again. My story here is that the daughter of an Orc chief was arranged to be married into House Ozborn for political reasons that never fully panned out. That's how Mosh's parents got together. I think they got along well and Mosh's home was internally happy, but... I mean, shit, I don't think Lord Ozborn got along well in polite society as it was, so no matter how gentile his wife was able to be, the family was always isolated. If that wasn't enough of a strain, imagine what happened when Mosh got to school.  
  
Background: Former TAG Student. By the time Richard was school-aged, he had fully transitioned into being a boy. His parents noticed early on that he was more interested in boy-things, and for once their social isolation had its perks. Whenever anyone asked, "Wait, didn't we hear your child had been a girl?" the Lord, Lady, and what staff they had would say, "Boy and Girl. The girl passed away." No one pressed this too hard, because even if they had sworn that little Richard looked just like the girl toddler they had been introduced to years before, "All Orcs look the same." So Richard was enrolled into Lord Derbery's School for Young Gentlemen and was extremely careful in locker rooms and when using the bathroom. As you can imagine, Mosh was not in a great position to make a lot of friends. That said, he turned out to be a minor musical prodigy. His music teacher, Benito Drurisano, went to bat for him and got him put into the school's Talented and Gifted program, which put him into closer contact with the school's other weirdo. Given the current venue, I imagine that I don't have to really go into what a blessing that can be. That got him through his Elementary years in one piece. High School was a bit of a different beast. Turns out, the band of his chums he fronted, The Rolls and Scones, was actually pretty good and started sneaking out to play gigs in shittier taverns when they were about 16. This is how they started the slow decent into playing louder and faster music. By the time everyone was ready to move out and take on their adult responsibilities, Richard had taken about all he could stomach of "Polite Society" and struck out trying to make his fortune as an adventuring Bard.  
  
Class: Bard/Barbarian. Turns out, meritocracy is a lie and no one really trusts a Half-Orc to sing good enough to be of any use, so Mosh kept getting pigeon-holed as a bruiser. To be fair, he was pretty alright at the work, seeing as he's both strong and hardy, and it was, as such, a bad gig. That said, he still wasn't happy, and this was not helped by the fact that he had, for literally his entire life, been suffering from undiagnosed bi-polar disorder. When he was young, his mood swings were attributed to his "duel nature, savage and gentile, at war with itself," which is, to be very clear, racist bullshit. Manic episodes were great when he was out on the road, but his depressive episodes were crippling, leaving him holed up for days on end, nearly starving to death. Music was the only thing that would given him comfort, but on the bad days he couldn't even get out of bed, much less play the lute. All the same, he muddled through. He would still gig from time to time, playing music that rich people thought was too loud and too angry but commoners fucking loved. Battle paid the bills, but his music made him feel alive. Eddie Mudwolf Skelter, a Bard who had both fought and played with Richard, helped him get into the College of Blades, which lead to more and better work. The real breakthrough came when Mosh was helping to bring down the necromancer Siergon Skullhood, who had been disturbing Dwarven and Goliath burial sites throughout the Northlands, building themself an army of the undead. In a desperate move, Mosh just fucking played as hard as he could, summoning the inspiring the Ancestors of the Northfolk to grant him their power. Mosh's particular style of "Blood and Iron Music" has started to become more and more popular among the Northfolk, and Mosh is spreading it wherever he can.  
  
Equipment cleanup:  
-Lute strings are arranged in pairs, called courses, though I guess in a Renaissance lute, one course only has one string. Anyway, that's what Mosh plays.  
-Practice is Mosh's emotional support weasel. They've been together since he was very young. She was an old weasel to begin with when Mosh went after Siergon Skullhood, and Practice's death at Skullhood's hands was part of why Mosh was so ready to chase them half way across the world. When the Ghosts of the Northfolk poured out of Valhalla to hear Mosh play, it was because Practice had guided them. As a gift, Oden restored Practice to life and made her immortal.  
-It took a couple of scary nights and a serious intervention for Laur'ten-al, Mosh's then girlfriend, now life-partner, to convince him that Rage was a bad coping strategy and channeling all his misery into music wasn't a perfect solution. Laur has been working with other Druids of her Circle to help develop the best course of therapy for him and acts as his substitute councilor when they're away from Zegeph, who is a much older and wiser druid who lives his most of life as either a six-foot-long gila monster or a butterfly. Their alchemist friend Rex has also just about worked out the ideal medication for him, and learned a lot about psycho-active drugs along the way.


End file.
